In a traditional software model, corporate information technology (IT) groups purchase software, deploy the software, and manage the software in its own data center. In such a model, the IT group is responsible for the performance and availability of the applications or purchased software. Traditionally, such IT groups use tools for monitoring the software applications in order to ensure consistent performance and availability.
Software as a service (SaaS), sometimes referred to as “on-demand software” or “Cloud software”, is typically a software delivery model in which software and its associated data are hosted centrally (typically in the Internet or cloud) and are typically accessed by users from a computing device (e.g., desktop, laptop, netbook, tablet, smartphone, etc.) using a web browser over the Internet. SaaS has become a common delivery model for many business applications, including accounting, collaboration, customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), invoicing, human resource management (HRM), content management (CM) and service desk management, etc. SaaS has been incorporated into the strategy of many leading enterprise software companies.
However, in the SaaS services model, in which the software is often provided as a service by a third party, end-user organizations frequently subscribe directly with a software provider. As such, an end-user generally directly contacts the SaaS provider to provide the software with a certain level of performance or availability.
However, often the end-users have neither the skills nor the economic resources to actively track such SaaS service levels. Nor would they generally have the tools to track such levels even if they wanted to. Frequently, there are no consistent service level agreements (SLAs) from a corporate perspective and even where there are SLAs, there are few tools to track performance let alone enforce service levels. As such, corporations frequently can no longer count on their IT groups to be responsible for the operations and management of mission critical applications. Often the IT group is reduced to merely supporting network and desktop access to SaaS providers, and not the performance of the SaaS applications themselves. Frequently, SaaS providers are now responsible for the application's performance and the corporate IT groups may not even have a direct relationship with the SaaS provider.